Tag Archives: Know

Remember how weird it was to ask questions about sex as a teenager? High school teacher Al Vernacchio answers his students’ questions about everything from DIY birth control to how to tell when a guy really likes you, in an excerpt from his new book.

On the first day of my Sexuality and Society class, I don’t pass around anatomy drawings. I don’t hand out pamphlets about safer sex, although those are stacked on a table near the door. Instead, the first thing I do is establish ground rules. People should speak for themselves, laughter is OK, we won’t ask “personal history” questions, and we’ll work to create a community of peers who care about and respect one another. Only then can we get to work.

I’m all about context. Talking about sexuality, intimacy, relationships, and pleasure can’t be done in a vacuum.

‘Software is eating the world!’ US tech luminary Marc Andreessen declared in 2009, on the eve of launching his venture capital firm, Andreessen-Horowitz. This extraordinary claim has become the mantra of Silicon Valley startup entrepreneurs, codifying a new philosophy of tech entrepreneurialism and kickstarting a bold new era of ‘creative destruction’. Decoded it means: software engineers are world-builders – so look out! Bored with building apps, games, and websites, the latest generation of tech entrepreneurs are creating social operating systems for the societies and economies of the future. Take the sharing economy startup Airbnb, for example (recipent of $112 million in funding from Andreessen-Horowitz in 2011). Andreessen claims:

Airbnb makes its money in real estate. But … Airbnb … has much more in common with Facebook or Google or Microsoft or Oracle than with any real estate company. … Airbnb is building a software technology that is equivalent in complexity, power, and importance to an operating…

It’s safe to say that if you’re reading this, you probably use Google in some way, shape, or form. Google has expanded from being just a search engine to a full suite of online services. It’s a shame then that many people have no idea just what they can do with Google.

Here’s a hint: It’s a lot more than just searching for stuff.

1. Reverse Image Search

Have an image but don’t know where it came from? You can drag and drop your image straight onto Google’s image search for it to do a reverse search for you.

By doing this, Google will give you any other site that uses the same image, as well as visually similar images. This is useful to check if anyone else is using your images without permission or to check where a certain photo was taken.